Buff espionage. Nerf blitzkrieg.

[Biz_]

the only way to guarantee against elimination is to maintain a standing army. how big does that army need to be? well it depends how powerful your neighbors are.

right now all you have to go on is demographics and quantity of spare strategic resources which tell you very little in a game with more than 4 or 5 people. this makes it very risky to do neglect making troops. end result = high-level strategic decisions are based on guesswork, and making decisions is important

the other extreme is full visibility. you can see what all your enemies are doing, and make sure to have enough military force. end result = decisions are easy, and executing strategies optimally is important

previous games had a nice compromise between these. you weren't relying on blind faith when you decided that you could afford to make a wonder instead of a few more troops. at the same time, you were not able to get the complete picture of a civ's activity. it was basically making semi-educated guesses.

espionage achieves this balance because you have to pay (make yourself weaker) to get more info (make better decisions). maybe vanilla civ 4's freely visible power graph was a bit much, but hints about what is going on would be great, such as what policies people are adopting or what technologies/units they have.

adding consequences for rushing also helps indirectly. right now the only way to guarantee survival is with troops. but there isn't enough of a disadvantage when they are used. retreat is basically free. if attacking was the bad decision the consequences are minor. if booming was the bad decision the consequences are severe. war weariness kind of did this, but in a broken way

always war teamgames don't really need this, but it allows for a lot more variety in FFA games.

right now it's a lot of luck. if you can expand without having to defend, you're at a huge advantage compared to someone who escorted settlers and whatnot. on the other side, people spend hours building up a civ and then just die because you can send in lots of units before they have time to react. games come to a rather abrupt end, and it's less satisfying

 

[Onionsoilder]

You can talk with your military advisor to get a rough estimate of how powerful different civilizations are.

 

[SkepticalSinner]

I definitely believe espionage needs to be in the game. At the very least, an Embassy style (was this Civ 2? I forget!) where you expend money to get information on Cities, Armies etc. Not sure I want a return to the BTS Spy Spam.

 

[Biz_]

You can talk with your military advisor to get a rough estimate of how powerful different civilizations are.

i guess that's true, but the UI is atrocious for it unless there's a way to get the info without cycling through messages one by one

is there a mapping from advisor statements to values? for example, how much stronger is "not to be trifled with" vs "stronger than us"...

 

[aryah]

I definitely believe espionage needs to be in the game. At the very least, an Embassy style (was this Civ 2? I forget!) where you expend money to get information on Cities, Armies etc. Not sure I want a return to the BTS Spy Spam.

Yes, embassies! I too don't wish to fiddle with spy units, nor spy points. Nor do I think most of their mission options contribute much strategically to the game.

however info accumulating through time, plus some way to have a chance of performing sabotage of city production after sufficient info is known, to be able to delay a culture/scientific victory by other means than just war.

 

[Biz_]

I actually liked the graphs in civ4, but they were too revealing because they were only 1 or 2 turns behind.

I think if we could have graphs/histograms/timelines by default it would be cool, but let there be a high delay before a new readings get added. And then some sort of system to spend things to reduce how much that delay is would allow a more balanced form of espionage.

 

[James009]

I'd enjoy seeing a rendition of the Civilization IV espionage system (with the budget and the units). I've always that it was informative, engaging, rewarding, and enjoyable.

Note: The system was made even better with the Super Spies Mod. Espionage was perfect then.

 

[Snuffleupagus]

What about just making scouts have a 'spy' promotion? Maybe available at lvl 3 a scout could gain the upgrade of being able to move through other civilizations territory.

I'm not sure how you could make this work in multiplayer. I guess people would just know you were poking around. I don't think making them invisible would work.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Actually, I think a lot of espionage could be abstracted by adopting Civ5 ideas. A good example is the Great General... so let's use this idea as a base:

Make the Spy an invisible unit that can stack with all other units except other spies. Allow it to move through enemy territory, ignoring ZoC. Have a decent visibility range... and let it detect adjacent spies.

That would give you tons of valuable tactical intel without changing a lot. And to top it off, you could add some extra functions inspired by the Great General:

Enemy units in the same tile as the spy suffer a -5% combat malus, sort of a weaker reverse Great General. Spies in cities can see the full city billboard (i.e. current build + build time + growth time).

That would give you all intel you really need and the small combat malus would allow espionage to tip critical battles. All without a lot of extra fuss.

Cheers, LT.